This week’s parshat, Shemot, states that the Jewish people were fruitful in Egypt and multiplied: “And the Jewish people were fruitful and multiplied and swarmed and very much increased and became robust, and the land was filled with them.” This term, “vayishritzu”, “swarmed,” as a noun means “insects” and as a verb means “to reproduce,” in a swarming manner.  It is used most often in the Torah to refer to the proliferation of insects or animals.

Though the Biblical verse sees the proliferation of the Jewish people in Egypt through the lens of insect-like swarming, the Talmud (Sota 11b) utilizes a different metaphor for this fecundity — that of growth from the ground:

“Rav Avira taught: In the merit of the righteous women that were in that generation, the Jewish people were redeemed from Egypt….The women would take food to their husbands in the field, and bond with them in sexual intercourse between the borders and fences of the fields…and when the time for them to give birth arrived they would give birth in the field under the apple trees…And the Holy One would send from the heavens above an angel who would clean and prepare the newborns, just as a midwife prepares the newborn…And once the Egyptians would notice them, realizing that they were Jewish babies, they would come to kill them. But a miracle would occur and the babies would be absorbed by the earth. And the Egyptians would then bring oxen and would plow upon them, as it is stated: “The plowers plowed upon my back; they made long their furrows” (Psalms 129:3). After the Egyptians would leave, the babies would emerge and exit the ground like grass of the field, as it is stated: “I caused you to increase even as the growth of the field” (Ezekiel 16:7).”

(In this vain, the great-grandfather of one of our Kesher members, Rabbi Moshe Froideger, who was the Chief Rabbi of Budepest about 100 years ago, writes in his book on the Torah, Vayidaber Moshe, that this field and growth image may be why we begin the seder by dipping a vegetable and saying the blessing, “Who creates the fruit of the ground.”)

Perhaps the metaphors of animals swarming and trees growing from the ground are reflective of two different ways of seeing the Jewish people. Both indicate proliferation and fertility, but the first, the animal metaphor, is indicative of chaotic movement. In contrast, vegetation, though still growth oriented, is stolid, easier to keep track of, to connect to and to recognize.  Swarming insects are moving, shifting, dying and giving birth. This reproduction happens fast and furious. In contrast, the reproduction of the tree is long, calm and rooted.